president obama's trust where this is called into question declining poll numbers show that americans don't have faith in their leader in chief just how far down as you fall and can we improve his image before it's too late poster frank luntz gives us the latest on obama's unpopularity plus p.r. strategist howard bragman and political commentator tanya acker on what the president means to do now to regain the confidence of the american people it's all next on politicking with larry i. welcome to this week's politicking we're talking about the president's declining

poll numbers and no one better to break it all down for us the real story with the pollster and republican strategist frank luntz one of my favorite people all right the recent c.n.n. poll of polls and frank by the way is a republican strategist a best selling author and he's been a commentator an analyst on fox news and c.b.s. recent c.n.n. poll of polls shows obama's approval rating at forty one percent fifty five percent disapprove the only people lower of congress who have faith what's going on franco first of congress has got it eight percent nine percent job approval rating khadafi had a fifteen percent job approval rating and that was among the people who killed him hitler had eleven percent yeah bug juice and so it shows you how far congress has fallen the i want to take it one step broader which is that we don't trust any institutions right now it's not just the presidency that's in challenges that's being in check and it's not just congress it's business leaders it's cultural leaders it's the media it's everybody we think is out for themselves and against us

there's no cronkite there is no there's no arbiter and there's nobody that we trust mother teresa is gone nelson mandela's been off the political stage there's really nobody that we can look to and say that. that someone i believe in you know had it by the way was colin powell but then after the iraqi situation even he lost that kind of bipartisan is no figure in america that americans can say yes there is one but she's not political and that's oprah winfrey she's the most trusted most respected individual in the country and in some cases across the globe hillary would come in higher politically though and she's a very divisive social come in very high among women very high among democrats very low among republicans as well she could win though she is clearly more than just viable i think that she's the front runner but going back to a bollock is it was a good thing that the challenge with him is that if the polarization this country is so deep that republicans democrats can't talk to each other they can't dine with

each other right now i like to joke that democrats laugh louder are much more fun to hang out with but they always stick you with a check at the end of the evening right now we're not talking to each other and so this divide has become a chasm but in every poll in the past obama always came out well in likeability yes we liked him because because they thought he was honest because they thought he was trying the problem with health care is that now they're not convinced that that he looked a straight in the eye and said again and again if you want to keep your health care you can well it doesn't work that way if the insurance companies have to cut you off let's presume he's not a liar was he misinformed he not knows own bill the insurance company stab him what happened or are you saying he's a liar well first of all never use that language because it's so polarizing and so divisive one of the reasons why we've lost civility in this country is because we accuse our opponents of things that are just awful but i am not convinced that he

told the truth or not convinced that he didn't understand all of the word would you use that he did not acknowledge the consequences of his legislation. is this all due to the affordable health care it's all due to that nancy pelosi her famous statement which we laugh about today even one crying is that well we'll have to pass the legislation to see what's in it larry when you're doing something so significant that's going to affect every american don't you have the responsibility to know the consequences of that legislation to know the good in the bad and what i would argue is that why rush it that the republicans should be criticized for shutting down the government and playing politics i agree with that but a lot of what they were doing was saying that you don't know what's in this legislation and it is better to get it right than it is to rush it sixty seven percent of america wants a health care program but they don't want the only industrial nation in the world doesn't have want to go now but we don't want this health care program what we want

is to be protected against preexisting conditions what in this covers what we want is to know that we will get the quality of care that we deserve at a time that we need art which this doesn't do and i'd argue that it is not a discussion over the website that that's just something that happened that nobody was expecting. your your co-pays are going to go up your premiums are going to go up your ability to access your doctor and your hospital is going to change larry the people who will watch this show probably don't have that problem because they're probably wealthier than average better educated than average and have the capability to make the right decisions for themselves but for the average american they're being pushed into something that they didn't ask for they didn't want a takeover of health care what they wanted was these things to be covered it could have been done in a smaller more efficient more effective way it wasn't and now we have the mess we

had over the weekend the administration declared it has achieved its goal of making health care work best majority of usage you know that the website work right and what they're saying is that now ninety percent of the people who come in can get signed up i'm not sure if it's ninety percent but think about it so that means the ten percent of americans one out of ten there are people who are on the cameras and hailing the sound for this little conversation we're having right now it means that one or two of the people who are in this studio will not be able to access it and that's just signing up that isn't even getting the health care delivered to you. we have a responsibility as as people who do talk about politics just as the people that we elect we have a responsibility to tell people the truth and they deserve the truth and if the system doesn't work it's more important for us to acknowledge when we make mistakes than it is for us to push a well bred i wrong you know i agree with you howard bragman is going to be joining

us in a couple minutes and that's what he does for a living well as do as a pollster obama calls you and i know you're republican poll i go by the way that is what advice would you give the first thing is when the president states asks you you answer you don't tell him no second is if you put yourself he put the country ahead of your party the first i'd say to him is that the american people appreciate those who admit when they make mistakes most americans support his intent they just don't support the results stand by intent stand by the principle that people should be helped but acknowledge that the actual details of the plan had not been worked out and made you made a mistake yeah admit you made you didn't tell the truth and myth that what you claimed wasn't true and how do you say that only by saying it by being blunt this is why chris christie is so popular chris christie says it is it is is an added him self. ever chris christie goes he brings people to their feet you know but i want

to really mean i get nominated the other day he says he's all cuomo says that chris christie is going to stay out of the not indorse in the new york governor's race what the american people want is our individuals their leadership who say what they mean and mean what they say look each other straight in the ah and tell the truth so you would tell abominate go on television and say i misinformed you and i would go on t.v. to the toughest interviewer of all i would take whoever is the strongest individual and let them have at me and be candid and in that would amount to i would i would do my best to not come at the wall but i wouldn't i wouldn't yell at them but that would be disrespectful and then hopefully he'll see this whole incident rush limbaugh and the do it not because it's not just the pope but that you have that that's the but that's the whole issue is that they want the chance the public wants a chance to hold you accountable for this reactive buttes i want this to be a useful conversation there are three actually views that the american people want

most in government officials see effectiveness and accountability and what they want from their political leadership is common sense. that's what they're trying to get out of people and they don't think that this health care plan makes health care more efficient more effective and the president isn't holding himself accountable joining us now are two people who know what the president needs to do to regain that popularity the p.r. strategist and the vice chairman of reputation dot com author of the best selling where's my fifteen minutes howard bragman also here to help is fergal commentator tanya who worked with the two thousand and four kerry edwards campaign and whatever happened edwards. we've just heard frank who remains with us we're doing already had to say i think that frank was right on the money and here is one of the things he said that was so right american people want more than anything else efficiency they want things to work and so if we can all put aside for the moment our various

partisan differences over this health care plan whether or not there should be a health care plan the fact is we have one the supreme court has upheld it and what this administration has got to do is to make sure that it's running effectively for the people that's it that's intended to service you know what would you agree what he said i do when you said go back and look at this bill conceived plan i go back and i looked at in bill sold plan. united states has the most expensive health care in the world but not the best health care in the girl in select moments were very good but consistently not the best in the world high infant death rates other measures that we use number two obamacare or how the affordable care act does solve a lot of wrongs with the system it helps people with preexisting conditions it make sure that our limits that people don't go bankrupt in health care none of

this was sold well and he did a horrible horrible horrible job of explaining why this is positive and even today you can turn on any network and you can hear twenty people talking about how they lost their insurance nobody will say i got insurance and i couldn't get it before so frank this may not be solvable. i don't know how i don't know how it is solvable because when people get thrown off it creates instability and anxiety and that is the worst thing you can have when it comes to health care is fear the second aspect is it is not more fordable for a lot of people who are signing up for it because of co-pays and because of premium increases third is that if you don't have access to the hospital system the true used to to the doctor that she used i never use a doctor so it doesn't really matter to me obviously but by looking at me you can see i don't use are glued up i don't go to a doctor i just i don't i don't need bad news i have enough bad news in the

newspaper i don't need someone telling me if i'm going to go in the next thirty days i just want to go i want to be able to snap my fingers louder than that i just want to go if you lose you doctor. it's unimaginable and so larry that's the challenge of your problems that we can't solve i do think though that it's important to focus on another part of the narrative here that has really gone missing in the coverage of a lot of the bottle of the roll out your talking about the people who lost insurance who the president promised would never lose insurance that's about five percent of insured americans where there's a whole other ninety five percent of people who are benefiting from this who are having those problems i mean one of the things that the media is not doing and you know i might quote the pope here i never did i think i'd be quoting a pope but you know the pope recently said that when an elderly person dies of exposure no news when the stock market loses two points it's all over every channel what we're not seeing are the stories of the people in south l.a.

the people outside of oakland the people in the other really impoverished communities who are getting service who in spite of the fact that their insurers are changing rules changing coverage areas those people are getting service they're getting treatment and frankly i don't think we're i don't think we're talking about what is probably a low it's ninety four percent why i think that howard nailed it i think that from the outset the administration did a really terrible job of selling the program i think that they let the g.o.p. get ahead of the game in terms of telling americans what this plan was or what it was and i think that there was a lot of air time that was given to a lot of nonsensical claims like sarah palin's death panels and the like i mean these are things that made very sexy news really good sound bites but they really didn't go to what this plan matter what it would do for most americans friends that were you would say that opposed what would you say. i'd say you have to go back to ground zero you have to say here is what we can see this plan as here is why we did

this plan and you have to go back and start to defined us start to sell with passion but the other thing is this frank was just talking about the reason obama won the election was he did it community by community and the this health care plan has to seoul be sold community by community because the biggest problem and this health care plan will not work if we don't get enough healthy younger people to sign up for it he's got to talk to college students and others and say you have to come on board and here's what i'm going to get that a break if they overturn congress don't wish to just throw the whole thing out make sure it was seeing more politicking with the panel after the break.

that i think. everybody thought if you. could you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy right now there's a role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been hijacked by handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one of those that's my job market it on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in. will we go beyond identifying the problem transfixed rational debate and a real discussion of critical issues facing america by the front door ready to join

the movement then walk a little bit of. a . problem it was terrible they come up very hard to make out a plan to get along here is a plot that never had sex with the earthquake there are no plans let's call it what. it was. just.

one of the problems. of the. welcome back to politicking with frank luntz tanya acker and howard bragman i was mentioning could congress overthrow this bill but you said he would veto it right it's a result of this bill is in place the bills in place the question is are we going to do the right thing and the right thing is to allow it to remain in law because the plea because the president ran on it in two thousand and twelve and got elected on it but the right thing is also to modify parts of it that aren't working this president wants to defend it and he thinks that any kind of compromise is selling out well there are aspects of it that are problematic for businesses that are problematic for employees and problematic for individuals why don't you just do the right thing and compromise look i don't think that's

a particularly controversial proposition i mean we do that all the time at legislation as well also not this congress i mean you have a congress that started out on day one saying we're going to make this has waterloo you know the notion that the president has been alone and some refusal to negotiate and by the way that even take issue with that because i think that you see more movement from this white house than you do from the other side in congress but all that being said you know what look how many times we played with social security over the years i mean that the idea of having to amend or revise legislation that's not novel and if it turns out that a bipartisan consensus determines that that's what's required then do it now they have no not a care and socially period did not have this kind of bless that to start with they had so you know. they remember medicare was so sure i was five years old but i remember medicare what is the history we've never once this is not really set you know there's no room some had a lot of negativity mostly from the politicians and i think it is

a minute that kennedy there was no big slap at kennedy when that change in civil rights also this is the biggest piece of legislation and i remind you that this that there were over twenty democrats who voted against it. this was never bipartisan legislation was pushed through it was a democrat versus republican vote which i accept because that's how the the house work but our politics have changed since then in response to this legislation he can't forget the results of two thousand and ten or two thousand and twelve the american people want them to get along to talk to compromise and to make something good happen and it's not happening how on earth do you do that i agree with you but when you've got a republican base that is dead set against this president that hates this president and when you've got people who are elected to congress for the sole purpose of impeding anything he wants to do i'm just not exactly sure what that road the compromise looks like i believe in it i wish it were possible but the notion that

the president because again remember if you were to just go off on his own issue some executive orders and make things more efficient than you're going have all kinds of folks on the right wing calling him commie a fascist dictator oh you know when everyone knows the numbers or is it doesn't require these executive actions and he's used it more than anybody else what there has to be and i recognize that there are conservatives a do not want the president to succeed but in the end we will only be successful as a country when people have the courage to stand up and say enough enough is. and it's not happening our perceptions reality right absolutely can he change the perception of what i think what you said he needs what we like to call a catharsis interview he needs to sit down with somebody who's perceived this tough stuff a mom plus chris matthews somebody who can really understands the politics and he needs to say it's not perfect our intentions were good our intentions are right it's not perfect and once we get this in place we are open to changes let's get it

up let's get it running right let's get past the technical issues with it and then if we see flaws we will fix them and i think just saying i have a willingness to change will mean a lot of employees with experience with us our hope by their enemies i would like to have rush limbaugh attack me where i mean i think it would help me in. that moment i've got him on speed dial i'd be happy to get mccall i think he could turn the election the other way i mean he could turn people he could make you like obama if you didn't like them ask rush. there just on that will happen. you know the problem that the issue that i have right around means hope you. but i don't but not everything is about politics i know that the name of the show is politicking but everything in life is about politics and one of the challenges that i face because i do these focus groups all the time and the tries me crazy is that people will not sit down and have a conversation like this anymore you cannot have

a dialogue about so many issues and it's even dangerous around the christmas table i hear stories of relatives having knockdown drag out fights couples who will no longer invite each other to dinner i didn't know you felt that way and then the dinners over you don't even pay for dessert more people have run out of more checks in the last six months because they are offended about the politics of others and to mother republicans they meet in a phone booth well we gerrymander. political districts and while somebody like ted cruz may be a war on the republicans party's us a lot of people may not like him or his base loves ted but howard what happened to conservative democrats conservative that well this is what i think happened if you look at the base of each party's so let's say you've got the hard right republican

base and the hard left democratic base what i think and you know granted i'm a democrat but i think that my experience with my party proves this out democrats particularly the ones who get elected they tell their base to shut the f. up i know we're on the internet but they used to be the republic thousand sequelae you know they be quiet we're going to win this the republicans at least today today's moderate republicans i mean the party leadership i say it still seems to me as if they feel like they've got to throw their hard right a bone you know they've got to show you know our you know we're not totally with gay people together you know well we don't trust them either they've got to kind of throw them a bone i think that the democratic base is much more likely to be kept in line and that may be because the country is probably a better. right of center and so our base just doesn't have as much room to act and the republican base to say yeah they give them an edge you know they want the whole country that's what i think the other thing is the primary process is geared towards the most liberal democrats and the most conservative republicans one reason

romney had such a problem going back to the center was because some of the things he said during the primary chris christie if he were to get the republican nomination would be an extraordinarily strong candidate ok however if how do you get that nomination how do you grow you in south carolina no you know we always do or it's christie it's interesting chris christie loses iowa wins new hampshire loses south carolina wins florida he's got an incredible record but here's the thing for christie he's actually a very moderate republicans policies but he's very tough and how he communicates. i started to tell this joke. wherever chris christie goes he brings people to defeat reason i run it as he hasn't seen his own feet in six years and this he is the best communicator that the g.o.p. has right now his directness he's in your face here's the question i have and you

guys should answer. can the american people be yelled at for two years as much at the end i don't think so i think they're going to pick him up part i think the republican party just him and bracing obama after the storms in new york superstorm sandy there are people who will hate him if christie whom who you fear is a democrat of course is out of it oh gosh i haven't given it much thought because i do think he is for men of all i mean and going back to frank's question i think there is something about that directness and bluntness that people actually like so i think that people maybe could stand being yelled at for not another couple of years i'd rather have that by moderate moderate i'd rather have the yeller be hillary than chris christie but that being said i think that you know you hear today and after that you had something really important and in my business and in the p.r. world the number one thing of importance in the reason you've been on the air for

almost three months now successful. is authenticity it's authenticity a you you have a sense of self you have a soul you have a true center as soon as people start veering from that and they're perceived as inauthentic that's when people lose their trust they will disagree with you but if you are authentic they will respect you a little ronald reagan was that way a lot of people didn't agree with him but they thought he was truthful in his belief and that was and that was romney's problem as well because he governed differently as massachusetts governor and he ran as a republican in a primary and that is exactly obama's problem is no is elections too early or it is too early i heard someone use the line that you ever commit suicide last term and. it really is both parties are making mistakes the republicans greatest advantage in

two thousand and fourteen is nancy pelosi and i made the mistake. of saying that to a colleague of yours who was horribly offended by but here's the point she is not a compromise or she is not a unifier she is as partisan as a get some we watch this in her defense of obamacare if they had someone who was moore's such centralized more centrist they would be much stronger being near a compromise boehner opened up the rules and people don't you know this during the four years that nancy pelosi was speaker republicans could offer anything they could barely get to the floor to talk they were shut out later said we're not going to have these long votes we're going to give the democrats the right to offer changes to the rules it has slowed up the process but he did a lot to open up the conversation between republicans and democrats i think he's being held hostage in many instances by the extreme wing of his party so i'm not prepared to say that he's not willing to compromise i think frank's right i think

that there have been glimmers of hope from time to time with great faith some between that he might be willing to move but i don't think that he can because i think that there's an element in the republican party that is very proud of being able to do nothing but bomb was no in twelve and sixteen irrelevant right to be irrelevant that he won't be torn in the campaign in two thousand and sixteen will be a referendum on what he has done and whether to carry it forward with hillary clinton whether to change course with whatever republican but hillary would be wouldn't wouldn't she be so formidable as to right now be in a major favor well what hillary's got going for bill there that killed him for absolutely where he quill do good and they know that they already were so good at three thousand eight while what hillary has isnt it. in less something very shocking happens she is going to coast into the democratic nomination not joe biden

and i don't think he's going to run god no no he's not going to run and cuomo is not going to run if hillary runs she is going to coast into this nomination means you can collect more money it means you're less damage the republicans are going to beat the crap out of each other just like they did last time and go in damage and some income limping in and they're going to have to end the primary and start their fund raising all over almost any long shot republican if you like as a republican consultant and the one that i'm looking at in addition to christie is marco rubio i think marco rubio is for the republicans what brock obama was for the democrats in two thousand and seven thank you all very much we've just begun to fight luntz acar bragman sounds like a law firm. for joining us on politicking today for my viewers out there i want to hear from you join the conversation on my facebook page share your thoughts on twitter by tweeting king's things and using the politicking hejduk that's all for

this week's politicking c.n.n. . please. please.

please. please please. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. what's happening to me goes i'm happy martin this is breaking news that though yesterday obama gave a really impressive and wide ranging speech on an issue that people have access to ninety nine percent of income inequality he said that the gap between the over rich

and the rest of the country is the defining challenge of our time and that it drives everything he does an office yes obama even went as far as i'm deconstruct the very system he's a part of. ordinary folks can write massive campaign checks or hire i price lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else's expense so people get the bad taste that the systems ranked. that increases services and polarization and it decreases the political participation that is a requisite part of our system of self-government. wow i couldn't agree with him more but if there's one thing we know about this president that he talks a big talk back and all that lofty rhetoric is a different story this is a wall street man who was put in office by goldman sachs obama has appointed big

bank lawyers eric holder and lonnie brewer to top positions of the dozens apartment and wall street favorite son timmy geithner to the treasury under obama wealthy americans have only grown stronger and richer and more in bold and so you can't blame me for being just a little bit skeptical of a one percenters script and it's time to end the charade guys let's break the set. of the. it was a. very hard to take a. long line that had sex with that hurt right there those. are the.

guys there's a grave threat facing our nation and it can hit you anywhere at any time. could you imagine just walking down the street minding your own business when someone punches you in the face for no reason at all it's called the knockout game with me here rabbi gary masse. which he is a former cop lives in brooklyn he is teaching fellow jews to defend themselves against the so-called knockout attacks has a black belt also in karate and is known to fellow cops is rambo it's also there's a racial component we well let me say this there may be let me say this the victims appear to have been all white and the assailants appear to have been all black

so yes it seems the corporate media can't seem to shake its fixation on the latest fake phenomenon because you see this is not new and there is no real data supporting this growing trend in fact over the last two years there's only been get this point seven percent increase in unarmed random assaults but i do fox news is going to lot of pesky thing called facts stop them from a perfectly good opportunity to fearmonger us about brown people the point is that all of this is being blown out of proportion and it's turned into one giant race baiting distraction so let's look at a couple of stories being knocked out by the knockout game for example have you ever heard of alec or the american legislative exchange council well if you've been watching breaking the set and probably the answer is yes but the corporate media barely makes a mention of this highly influential lobbying group which is holding a giant summit today and washington d.c. encountered with massive protests see this forty year old organization is comprised

of conservative pro-business individuals would team up with corporate heavyweights from telecom to big oil and what do you know alec is responsible for some of the worst legislation on the books including the infamous stand your ground laws voter id requirements and the right to work an initiative which is really one massive attack on unions today back door meetings are happening with lawmakers from all across the country so they can go back to their respective districts and lay out alex corporate agenda the model bill is being attacked this week are the e.p.a. is regulation of green. house gases and the opposition to food labeling among many others and yet another story overshadowed by the cayo nonsense is n.s.a. spying which by the way is getting worse by the day as the leaks continue to confirm the newest revelation is that the n.s.a. collects a staggering five billion international cell phone g.p.s. locations daily expanding its open air spying prison globally and also the editor

of the guardian was recently called to testify before the british parliament why well after publishing n.s.a. leaks related to britain the u.k. government is trying to charge the publication under the terrorism act it's an unprecedented move which many see as the criminalization of journalism and as journalist glenn greenwald brilliantly tweeted if you want to make a list of the world's worst governments you can be again with the ones equating journalism with terrorism so while the real news is going on the focus is instead on mobs of black people randomly attacking white people maybe it's time to knock out the corporate media instead. do you ever get the feeling the global economic models run entirely on greed but today's society functions soley on the principle of nonstop consumption and while

it's clear that humanity is capable of much more of the system we live in is simply not sustainable what's the alternative to explore this question and more i spoke with an activist of the d. growth movement but for most an anti consumer's model to society his name is charles eisenstein and he's the author of a new book called the more beautiful world our hearts know what is possible i spoke to him earlier and i first asked him just how the ideals of the growth movement could be applied to our current political economy. i just don't understand d. growth you have to understand what growth is. growth is in economic terms it's the growth in the amount of goods and services that are exchanged for money so on a systems level that would mean do you go through mean less and less of nature being converted into products and less of human relationships being converted into services on the personal level it means. reclaiming some parts of life from money

let's take a look at u.s. consumption habits in particular because it's pretty shocking when you look at the stats for number one or two in the world in meat consumption depending on what source you're looking at number one in energy and number one in food waste charles how do we even begin to tackle mass consumption facing these kind of statistics. well i mean most environmentalist's will tell you that that continued growth is impossible that that on a finite planet we can't continue to have infinite economic growth and something's got to break you could argue that the economic crisis of two thousand and eight thousand and nine was at bottom a crisis in in growth. because our money system doesn't really work unless there is continually expanding demand which means expanding consumption expanding production expanding employment. more and more being consumed but you

look around society and nobody really thinks that you know look at all of the depression all of. the waste all of the alienation you know the ecological destruction what this world really needs it's more stuff right now i mean nobody's actually thinking that but we're stuck in an economic system that demands that and to solve it would and will require. a transformation that goes much much deeper than anybody's really. really talking about these days right i mean besides environment impact of mass consumption how do you think the idea of nonstop consumerism has affected global social habits. yeah i mean any any time that. we encounter what's called an undeveloped market basically what that means is zero here's some people who could be consuming more.

who don't have a fully monetized life who maybe still haven't lost the skills of mutual care of of i don't know healing with herbs of cooking traditional food they have ways to to share labor they take care of each other's children kind of like i was here few generations ago. and then these societies get converted into consumer societies but talk about economic fear that you're just talking about vulture capitalism is creeping into every nook and corner of the entire world turning people into consumers your book sacred economics you've said that scarcity is built into the monetary system what do you mean by that and how does it apply to today's economy. so we kind of take scarcity for granted as a fact of life and we look around the world and it's hard to say that that there is abundance when one in five children is going hungry every night but you little bit more closely and you see that the reason that they're going hungry isn't because of

a lack of food it's because fifty percent of all food in the west is or close to fifty percent is wasted huge tracts of land are planted for biofuels feedlot meat production lawns the largest irrigated irrigated crop in america lawns you know so we don't have a fundamental scarcity of food what makes it scarce is the way that it's distributed which is largely because of of the way money works so we have a scarcity of money. the same thing with with the recent trend toward shrinking of public services the shrinking of funding for the arts for for education all these things like where is all the money going is that there's a built in physical lack of this substance called money no i mean money is a social agreement we could create as much of it as we wanted. but we're locked

into a system and that system itself is locked into deeper more invisible narratives and ideologies and i would even say mythologies that that. perpetuate artificial scarcity so the scarcity is artificial and just to say at bottom where it comes from as far as money goes it comes from the fact that money is created as interest bearing debt i want to play you a sound bite from newton friedman who famously said this in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine the phil donahue show. what is great. of course none of us are really it's only the other for the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by free enterprise so it seems so there's friedman saying greed is good there is no turn it have to free

market enterprise charles what's your response. well so economic logic says that the more goods and services are produced the happier we are the better off we are like after all if you didn't want something it wasn't good in your life you wouldn't pay for right you would work less and make less money instead of making the money and sacrificing the time to buy this good therefore the more things that are being bought according to economists the more good it is being at but really you know you look around at you. you examine your life examine the lives of people in affluent countries it's just not true that the more stuff we have the happier we are in fact for a lot of people discover that it's really the opposite that yeah we have more and more of the things that can be quantified but less and less of the things that actually make life rich i think a lot of greed greed is actually a symptom it's a symptom of the scarcity of the things that money can't buy so if you're.

an alienated isolated separate self without community without intimate relationships with nature without being. embedded in this web of stories and and intimate relationships that once characterized society you know there you are in your suburban box disconnected from nature and community then you're going to feel hungry for something you're going to want to reestablish your last being us and so you'll have. an unstoppable desire to consume to expand the separate self to compensate for this lost being and i think when we're talking about growth as on the personal level a lot of people they want to recover these personal connections that can't be measured and that therefore economic growth and that whole ideology of greed will

never satisfied. that was author and activist charles eisenstein for us in new york . coming up i'll speak with one activist who wants to democratize our local economies and most show you how wealthy british style it's time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my extremes are the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports on our. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy albus. role. in

fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our press seven we've been hijacked why handful of transnational corporations they will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once all just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing there are no ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. of the the. with wealth inequality in america an all time high in congressional approval

ratings an all time low it's no wonder why people are worried about the future of this country today money not only means power it means political speech and the more wealth of the consolidated at the top the less people feel they have the power to change the system by the wealthy and powerful interests working to get the people all the time there are still plenty of steps we can take right now right here to democratize our local economies here to break down what exactly those steps are md i'm a professor of political economy the university of maryland gar al pair of it thank you so much for coming on alex i already are sorry i'm sorry you used to research foreign policy starting with world war two all the way to vietnam kind of analyzing the u.s. empire crimes what inspired your switch to domestic economics well i think unless we change the system totally from the bottom up. going to have international expansionism and periods and bombing of a kind proceeding move back to the heart of the question that is the nature of the political economy and i think the last discussion of how we actually came to

changing the system is the only answer to the ultimate intra foreign policy questions to. and you coauthored an article with kean bottom ten ways that a marker ties your local economy it goes with your book what then must we do pretty much a playbook on how to do this gar number one in the article is putting your money in local credit unions talk about this concept of what is a credit union and what we're doing to democratize the community credit union and we have you know many people who is one hundred thirty million americans who have democratized wealth that's a co-op one person one vote bank is a credit union they've got if you take them all together they have more money than the big new york banks any one of them wow and there they are you can move your money out of a bank and put it into a credit union which is a democratic bank and you can go a little further which some people in some parts of the country are doing too they are one person one vote you can get your friends together go to the board meeting and you can become the board of a one person one vote bank and begin investing in co-ops and other things that

begin to show people a different direction towards the overall system stepping that starting at the bottom and why is the call to fix these too big to fail too big to regulate banks not enough where the i think it what's going to happen with the banks even if they break them up they will reconsolidate that's what happened standard oil in a t.n.t. so some level they're going to have to be turned into either public co-ops and i think people are going to get angry enough to do that or nationalize but that's the ultimate solution but building from the bottom up giving people an idea of what it means that's the we begin to build education by doing and then pointing towards larger and larger issues the book is not in the strategies not just at the bottom it's how do we build over time to move to the big ones as well absolutely let's talk another initiative in the article which is taking back your local government through participatory. budgeting to talk about this concept how this work is very interesting it started out in brazil in porto alegre that is to say why does my can't the ordinary citizen be involved in the allocation of government money why not and so you can set that up in fact three cities new york does about ten million

dollars that way in chicago one of the aldermen to set up his district to do it that way vallejo california there they do very large scale citywide budgeting is beginning to be done that way changing the nature of the lobbyist to come in to the city council having ordinary people make those decisions as possible and again we're pointing from the bottom up and moving up nationally those are the kind of things we can build up to if we learn from the bottom up over time you know those cases are really fascinating and one that you cited in the article how would we even began to do something like that in washington d.c. i mean what's the first step at a particular well washington first step would be to go to go through the council and begin petition get a referendum saying we want to do this with x. number of dollars or in some neighborhoods or parts of it just beginning making the demand it's being done other cities all over the world it's being done why can't we do it here good question gar and really how amazing would it be to control our taxes taxes you have ever been to sure we could do something about that at least

a locally recently boulder colorado just voted to. put there are like tricity under public control this is an incredible feat to produce more renewables could this be replicated around the country as well i think that is what's interesting about boulder boulder had two big fights they won one by just a fraction of the vote and then of course the corporations came in and this is all done mainly by young people a lot of students involved in the next time around two to one vote and they want it and they're turning it from you know coal fire and oil fire over to renewables and it's a very serious operation there's discussion in pittsburgh and minneapolis many cities could do this and picking up on the boulder how did they exactly do it whether the referendum was the first step in getting yet another referendum was forced and then the org is they really did organize brilliantly so what you're saying is we have to get out and do something him. this is a big actually i mean it really is through these referendums and local actions that you can take out of the people realize how much power they have what they don't the press doesn't cover this but this is going on all over the country and that's what the book what then must we do is about that's what the paper did with gene is about

there's a lot going on with co-ops worker owned companies public banks that the press doesn't cover but can be done right and you can if they can do it in boulder if you can do it in chicago you could do it where you are there's fights being won all across the nation all across the world against the corporatocracy ghar let's talk about another prescription in the article in the book about nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals you're talking about how they can use their resources to fight things like unemployment poverty even global warming how how would that work what would be incentivization. yeah how would it be incentivized part of the being pushed this is a good one for students because that on one hand challenging them to stop investing in energy companies which are polluting and creating the climate change but the other part of it is hospitals and universities particularly by a lot of things in cleveland for instance there's a hospital university the hospital cleveland clinic and then it's case western reserve university right in the middle of a very poor neighborhood they buy three billion dollars in goods and services plus

their investment plus they're just what they buy so they are in that city there there's been an initiative to buy from work or own companies in a very poor part of the city to create worker ownership using procurement students can make that happen in many universities they can say stop investing in the big guys start buying from work or co-op start building a poor neighborhoods that also is happening in the press coverage very little of it but it is do it's doable it's being done and it's another precedent for democratizing ownership and building a different vision of where we're going we're full i think decades ago someone saw the corporatization of private takeover of hospitals and universities they'd say that the path taken here we are with actual corporate name is taking over hospitals and would that be done through referendums as well through the school through any. any track that gets you there a referendum is run but out of pressure and in some cases you find universities and hospital and then a strangers welcome the idea that they've just been locked into an old pattern say well why not we can do that here and that's what i think happened in some parts of

cleveland the awful what other communities are practicing efforts like that could serve as a blueprint for the rest of country again as i say the press just doesn't cover covering pittsburghers developing this cincinnati is developing there are three in the washington area washington d.c. area is developing an emerald texas number of cities one hundred cities have already made inquiries to do the cleveland so called the cleveland model of worker co-ops supported by the purchasing of hospitals and universities so it's beginning to spread all over the country now and i think you're going to see more of it again young people could really make it happen at universities if they begin putting the pressure on and telling them you know this is being done lots of places why don't we get on the battling and start doing it or i think i think the first step is that you know people are just so overwhelmed where do they even go how do they meet up with people to start these referendum to start these movement the pressure what's your recommendation first thing resources tools we have about a minute left ok well the book what then must we do is filled with these kinds of

examples that's why we wrote a website what then can i do that's ten list of things that kean and i put together another web site it's called w. the but community dash well put the dash in dot org and you'll find thousands of examples of this kind of thing that you can do and build up and again the notion is not just local but how do we begin getting ideas that can be applied you know before the new deal the national things were done in the state and local laboratories and then they became national ideas that's the concept you're not just local we're going national with a long build up over time beautiful this is exactly what we need we need to start local grassroots bottom up let's take this country back one community in time garlock care of it thank you so much everyone check out what then must we do and what i do so much for coming today for having me.

today workers across the country took to the streets in an unprecedented sign of solidarity against the fast food industries pathetically low wages thousands of fast food employees walked off the job to demand a fifteen dollars an hour wage and the right to unionize about punishment what started as a small organized movement in just a few select cities has caught on like wildfire now spread over one hundred cities across the nation considering the massive profits profits rather these corporate giants are raking in it's no wonder why workers are fed up with trying to get by in an livable wage the two biggest craptacular restaurants mcdonald's and young brands collectively bring in a seven billion dollar your income despite a growing profit margin the employees just aren't feeling the trickle down and it's not just fast forward workers themselves that are suffering it's every american and let me tell you why because no one can realistically survive on seven twenty five an hour u.s. taxpayers have been forced to make up the difference in public assistance programs

such as food stamps and medicaid in fact according to national employment law project mcdonald's alone cost taxpayers one point two billion dollars just last year which is quite ironic considering how these are the same corporations fighting against the nanny state yet they're the biggest welfare queens of all so big props to these workers who refuse to maintain the status quo and are putting their jobs on the line to challenge these crony institutions. in closing tonight i want to pay my respects to former south african president nelson mandela who died just a few hours ago at the age of ninety five this inspiring leader an anti-apartheid revolutionary not only changed his country but the and higher world. with his message of peace and racial unification i'll bring you more in mandela's life and legacy tomorrow but for now i'll leave you with his words no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion

people must learn to hate that they can learn to hate they can be taught to love for love comes more naturally to the human heart and it's opposite. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say wait substory. let's get this guy like you would smear that guy's stead of working for the people both missions the mainstream media are working for each other right on stage and.

they did rather well. i suspect. over by the way to do its job and you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning because there's so much hype that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy track help us. grow up i'm. going to go on i'm sorry and i'm a show we were a deal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america have to go ready to join the movement and welcome the big picture.